ON THE MIXED HERBAGE OE PERMANENT MEADOW. 
1297 
unmarmred plots yielded high percentages of Graminese. In the second of the four 
years (1867) they both yielded the lowest, and in the third (1872) about medium 
percentages. 
The percentages of the Leguminosse also fluctuated from year to year somewhat 
differently on the two plots, and did so without manifesting any very distinct tendency 
either to increase or decrease, in relative proportion to the rest of the herbage ; though 
the indications were perhaps the more towards increase with the continuance of the 
unmanured condition. 
Of total Miscellanese there was also considerable fluctuation in percentage from year 
to year, and this was the case on both plots. In the second separation-year (1867), 
when the percentage of grasses was on both plots the lowest, that of the Miscellanese 
was on both plots the highest; and whilst in the two subsequent separation-years (1872 
and 1877), the percentage of Miscellanese was on plot 3 fairly uniform, and much the 
same as in the first year, it was on plot 12 considerably higher than in the first year. 
On this plot, indeed, there was an obvious tendency to an increase in the proportion 
of such herbage. 
Looking thus at the percentage merely which each of the three main groups has 
contributed to the herbage each year, it would seem that both the Leguminosse and 
the Miscellanese, hut especially the latter, have rather gained than lost in the competi¬ 
tion with the grasses, as the exhaustion has proceeded. But, if we turn from the 
percentage to the actual amounts per acre of each description of herbage each year, a 
clearer idea of what has taken place will be gained. We now observe that each 
description of herbage—Gramineous, Leguminous or Miscellaneous—has considerably 
decreased in yield in the later years, and that this is so, though in different degrees, 
on both plots. 
Referring first to plot 3, we find the total produce of the grasses pretty equal in 
1862 and in 1867, little more than half as much in 1872, and only about three-fourths 
as much in the fourth separation-year, 1877, as in the first or second. There is thus, 
therefore, a manifest reduction in yield of such herbage independently of fluctuation 
of season. Of leguminous herbage there was much more in the first separation-year 
than afterwards; but more in the fourth than in either the second or the third ; indi¬ 
cating, therefore, a less marked decline in actual yield than in the case of the 
Graminese. The partial separations of later years, indeed, indicate a tendency to in¬ 
crease rather than to decrease. 
Lastly, of miscellaneous herbage, plot 3 yielded very fluctuating amounts in the four 
separation-years : in the second (1867) there was about one-and-a-half time as much 
as in 1862 ; in the third (1872) there was little more than half as much as in 1862, 
and very much less than half as much as in 1867 ; in the fourth year again (1877) 
there was very much less actual quantity of such herbage than in either the first or 
the second year. There was then, as with the grasses, a considerable reduction in the 
growth of these plants with the progress of the exhaustion, and this reduction of 
